• Connecticut police are searching for Annie Le, a 24-year-old Yale University graduate student who disappeared from outside the school of medicine building on Tuesday. Her purse and cellphone were found inside her office. • And on a campus across the country, students at USC are being warned about two men in a van, who have been stalking female students, and offering them "free rides." • Researchers have found that there are vast fluctuations in the male-to-female ratio for the Hypolimnas bolina, a species of tropic butterfly. The population has recently become female-heavy due to a male killing bacteria. • Melanie Oudin is now receiving media attention for yet another reason: her parents are divorcing. And apparently her mother had an affair with her coach. The "Juicy scandal" is explored in further detail here. • Two parents from Winnipeg have been charged with running a brothel out of their house while their 11-year-old daughter was present. A client reportedly overheard the mother telling her child "that it is OK for women to have sex for money, that it is normal, and talking about another woman giving her husband oral sex." • An unidentified 29-year-old woman fell to her death at an old building at the University of Toronto. She was apparently hunting for ghosts. • A transgender choirmaster for a Catholic church in Italy was fired recently, and the cathedral gave no explanation as to why Luana Ricci was canned. Ricci, who had been working there for 18 years, believes she was dismissed solely because of her gender transition. • While we applaud Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's attempts to address violence against women, we think rape and domestic violence are more than just "not cool." They are, in fact, a huge fucking deal. • The IAAF reportedly has the results of Caster Semenya's gender test, and needs to discuss them with her, but Athletics South Africa is blocking all contract. And ASA claims they haven't heard from the IAAF at all. To further complicate things, an anonymous source "closely involved" with Caster Semenya's gender testing says she has internal testes and no womb or ovaries. The IAAF may disqualify her from future competitions and even strip her of her medal, says the source. •

• Carine Roitfeld: "You know it's easier to look great in a dress when you are skinny. But I like a bit of curves and I like to do stories with different kinds of women...

• ... Because I see beauty in everyone." Can anyone remember the last time a French Vogue spread used a plus-size model? Because I cannot. [Fashionologie]
• Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd allegedly "chucked a wobbly" — in the native patois — when, while visiting Afghanistan, he wasn't able to blow-dry his hair prior to a photo op. [Times of London]

• Meanwhile, Gordon Brown wears four different kinds of foundation and bronzer, according to a step-by-step makeup guide left in the back of a taxi by an aide. [Daily Beast]
• Michelle Obama wore Michael Kors to the White House Correspondents Dinner, in case anyone is interested. Christian Slater, also in attendance, brushed up on his U.S. history: "I learned that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day within hours of each other 50 years from signing the Declaration of Independence." [WWD]
• Business Week found the factory in China that makes a shoe Michelle Obama wore once last fall — the Bandolino "Berry" pump — and the management there reports that its U.S. shipments have increased by 50% this year on last. Imagine this woman's effects scaled industry-wide. [BusinessWeek]
• Speaking of which, the First Lady's de facto stylist, Ikram Goldman, is reported to have ordered a white tuxedo from Martin Margiela. Michelle's probably steering clear of the Belgian designer's human-hair coats and comb minidresses, however. [Metro]
• To heighten excitement for its resort collection, which will be presented in no doubt lavish circumstances in Venice this Thursday, Chanel uploaded a video of Lara Stone and Baptiste Giabiconi trying on the collection while Karl Lagerfeld directs and Miles Davis plays. (Moderately NSFW.) [Fashionologie]
• Kylie Minogue is doing a guest spot on next week's Britain's Next Top Model. [Mirror]
• Adriana Lima recommends boxing for health. Insert your own knock-out pun here. [People]
• Forever 21 knocked off Lanvin. Given the original t-shirt cost somewhere north of $600 US — it was 3% silk! — and given Alber Elbaz's firm position against doing a diffusion line of his own, it's hard to raise much ire about this. But has anyone at this chain ever had an idea of their own? [Fashionista]
• There was another high-end robbery in London's West End last night. This time, thieves targeted the Harvey Nichols, and stole hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of Garrard jewelry. An Anya Hindmarch store in the same neighborhood was burglarized last week, to the tune of £45,000. [UK Vogue]
• Union employees at Hart Schaffner Marx's Chicago factory are threatening a sit-in if the new owners of their bankrupt parent company, Hartmarx, move towards liquidation. [WWD]

Look, yes, you can see her nipple, yes, she's naked. Is every naked child now a fucking sex symbol because there are a small minority of sick, sick people in the world who view children as objects of sexual gratification? Is telling Olympia (who's now eleven and thinks that Rudd's an offensive jerk) that she's disgusting the right message to send a child (or a nation of children)? Is nudity always sexual? Do we start covering toddlers on the beach, or can we wait until they can talk even if they don't yet have secondary sex characteristics? Are you going to go arrest my parents for the pictures of me in the bathtub?

Of course, this isn't the first time this set of issues has reared its ugly head in the art world. More than a decade ago in the U.S., Jock Sturges had his negatives and camera equipment confiscated by the FBI on the "suspicion" that his art was child pornography (the grand jury threw the charges out), and then Sally Mann's photographs of her children caused quite an uncomfortable stir for her use of nudity (though, as their mother, she never faced any charges). Each time, the photographer was considered wrong or immoral and the kids were, more or less, told that they should be covered up and ashamed of their bodies which were, apparently, sexual only by virtue of their nudity. I guess we haven't really grown up all that much.

People the world over have body issues, and sexual issues and there are indeed sick people in the world who would probably think this was stroke material. I don't think that any of those things are helped by telling children that their bits are "naughty" or best kept out of the light of day — they'll have their entire adolescence to think that (and, for many of them, the entirety of their lives). Is it the best art photograph I've ever seen? No. Do I get what Ms. Papapetrou is trying to do with the art, besides show her daughter as she sees her, as a beautiful and natural creature? Yes, I do, and I think it's interesting. I also think it's sick that Rudd would call it sexualized and disgusting. I see nothing sexual about this picture: a 6-year-old's nipples aren't sexual, and her posture isn't sexual and I am strongly resisting the urge to question the motivations — political or otherwise — of a man who would look at this and see sex.

*(I think it smartly references the Birth of Venus (though the background is painted as a scene from Lewis Carroll), and plays off the idea of a painted background and live model as well the cheeze of childhood portraits and the unselfconscious nudity of a young child without descending into camp.)

Naked Child Cover Not Protest [News.com.au]
Nude Girl Art Row Flares in Australia [The Independent]
Girl, 11, Defends Naked Art Mag Shot [News.com.au]

An Interview With Jock Sturges [Boston Phoenix]
The Disturbing Photography of Sally Mann [NY Times]

Cochrane shows Tilley as anything but a shrinking violet. "There is something so active and punchy about Tilley's language, that it seems very difficult to imagine her doing anything that she didn't want to do," Cochrane writes. But what about Freud's children, whom he painted in the nude as teenagers? His daughter Rose said of posing in the nude for her pops, "People think there must be an Oedipal thing because of Sigmund Freud, but there isn't." You're right, it's an Electra thing! Freud's other daughter, Esther, who posed for him at 16, said she got to know her father through his painting her. "We'd never lived in the same city before…I simply took my clothes off and sat on a sofa when he asked. It never occurred to me to be ashamed."

There is something to be said for not being ashamed of one's nudity, but in the context of a father gazing upon his offspring's naked flesh for hours on end, it must be said that the matter is a little more complex than Esther is allowing. Just as the recent Australian scandal over nude photographs of young girls shows.

Here's the story: Police shut down a Sydney art exhibition of photographer Bill Henson's work because it featured naked photos of 12 and 13 year old girls. Even the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, came out against Henson, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. "I find [the photographs] absolutely revolting…Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly I don't think there are any - just allow kids to be kids."

Rudd's assumption is that there is something sexual or at least sinister going on between photographer and subject that robs the subject of her innocence. Again, I don't think the matter is that cut and dry. Though it is undeniable that there are power dynamics at play, it remains to be seen whether those dynamics are necessarily destructive.

[Photograph of Lucien Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" by Martin Goodwin]

The Eye Of The Muse [Guardian]
Rudd Revolted [Sydney Morning Herald]

Earlier: Being A Muse Kinda Sucks

Prosecutor Steve Carter described the rape in court as "childish experimentation" and further claimed that "I can't say it was consensual in the legal sense, but in the other - in the general sense, the non-legal sense, yes, it was." Carter also said that the rape was "all by arrangement." What Carter failed to mention is the ten-year-old in question was born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

This girl's young life has already been so unbearably rife with abuse and tragedy. She was born in the Aurukun Aboriginal community in Northeastern Australia, a hotbed of child molestation where violence of all kinds is so prevalent, the government has placed major curbs on the sale of alcohol, because as one government official put it, "A river of grog is killing people and destroying our communities." (As an inquiry into Australia's Aboriginal communities found earlier this year, "child sex abuse [was present] in each of the 45 communities they visited...[and] Children as young as five were found to have contracted sexually-transmitted diseases," the BBC reported.)

In addition to her FAS, the girl had been shuffled between foster homes throughout her life, and, according to the New York Times, was raped at age seven, a crime from which she contracted syphilis. After placement in several foster families, the girl had finally found a home where she was thriving in the seaside city of Cairns, but was removed from the home by social workers because the family was non-indigenous. The social workers in question thought that Aboriginal children should only be in Aboriginal homes. She was then moved back to Aurukun, where the more recent assault took place.
(The nine man gang-bang was only discovered in the first place because the girl went to a nearby clinic, asking for condoms and a pregnancy test. The clinic found that she had gonorrhea.)

Now that the case has been widely publicized, elected officials are coming out of the woodwork to decry the situation. Newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said: "I am horrified by cases like this, involving sexual violence against women and children. My attitude is one of zero tolerance." Prosecutor Steve Carter has been "stood aside" and several social workers have been suspended. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told reporters, "The system clearly failed this little girl.'' As judge Sarah Bradley is the current president of Australian Association of Women Judges, the system is in clear need of an overhaul.

Australia Shocked by Case of Raped Indigenous Girl [NY Times]
'It was a childish experiment' [Daily Telegraph]
PM's fury at freeing of girl's gang rapists [Sydney Morning Herald]
Prosecutor to be stood aside [Courier Mail]
'We failed pack-rape girl' [Sydney Morning Herald]
Aborigine child sex abuse 'rife' [BBC]

Earlier: Horrors